Essentialism Summary & key ideas explained

When his daughter was born, Greg McKeown knew exactly where he should be: with his wife and their newborn. But when he was asked whether he planned to attend a client meeting, he said yes. He felt it was expected of him, so he went.

Nothing came of that meeting. And even if something had, the time with his family was gone for good.

McKeown, a leadership consultant who has worked with some of Silicon Valley's best-known companies, came away with a lesson that grew into this book: if you don't decide what matters in your life, someone else will decide for you. Their priorities will quietly fill your days.

Most of us know the feeling. You're stretched thin. You're busy from morning to night, yet you rarely feel you're moving anything important forward. You say yes to keep the peace and then resent the yes.

McKeown's fix is a discipline he calls Essentialism: less, but better. Not a new trick for squeezing more into your calendar, but a different way of deciding what goes in it at all.

In this read, you'll find out:

• why success can be the very thing that knocks you off course;
• how a strict test turns hard choices into easy ones; and
• how to say no without losing friends or your job.

So where does the trouble start? Oddly, with doing well.